On average, a child in foster care will live in eight or more different homes before they land in a permanent placement or age out of the system (Source). Thus, children in foster care often endure constant, tumultuous change, moving from house to house and from one family to the next.
Many of our residents at the Children’s Home who come to live with us need refuge from foster care. This is our comprehensive guide for foster and adoptive families to learn about the detrimental effects of multiple placements in foster care on children.
The Effects of Multiple Placements in Foster Care on Children
Developmental
*Imagine waking up each day, hoping not to get a call demanding you to ditch your current living situation immediately, move to an unfamiliar home, change jobs, and live with a family you’ve never met in an unfamiliar environment. Unfortunately, this is a traumatic reality for many children in foster care.
Severe, lasting trauma negatively impacts the crucial stages of mental and physical development in childhood. Thus, some of the most prominent effects of multiple placements in foster care on the child are developmental challenges, such as:
- Compromised hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) functioning, causing an excess production of cortisol—the “stress hormone”
- Ongoing mental health crises
- Maladaptive processing of emotions
- Adoption of unhealthy attachment styles that impede the life-long ability to connect with others on a professional or personal level
- Communication deficits
- Delays and/or failures to meet milestones such as speech, crawling, walking, toilet training, the ability to converse and comprehend communication, eye contact, etc.
- Severe depression
- Regression in development
*We derive the information in this section from our own experiences and references to this source.
Juvenile Delinquency
One of the effects of multiple placements in foster care for young men is a higher prevalence of juvenile delinquency (Source). However, the academic and medical worlds of developmental child psychology are beginning to shift the consensus on whether a child’s gender predicts their likelihood of becoming a juvenile delinquent.
Young males are more likely to end up involved in crimes of violence, abuse, gang-related activity, and property destruction, but young females commit their fair share of crimes in other, more discreet ways. Regardless, gender is not as significant of a factor in the development of juvenile delinquency as instability in home placements throughout life.
Engaging Health Services
Although there are numerous other effects of multiple placements in foster care on children that we could explore, the last one we’ll mention is the prevalence of engaging health services.
This one is relatively simple. In essence, it turns out that individuals who grew up in foster care with multiple home placements turn out to have a high prevalence of engaging services and resources for both mental and physical health needs as adults (Source).
Supporting Survivors of Multiple Foster Care Placements
When engaging with a child in your care or someone else in your life who has suffered the effects of multiple placements in foster care, you might not have intuitive knowledge or experience in offering the proper support. That doesn’t mean you have to give up on helping them.
Not only do we have years of experience navigating parenthood for children impacted by foster care, but we have been creating resources here on our blog along the way for families in similar situations. We encourage you to:
- Check out our old and new blogs for more informative guides and valuable lessons in supporting and parenting foster and adoptive children.
- Consider our counseling services available for families impacted by foster care, adoption, and similar situations. Our counselor will be glad to see the whole family or have one-on-one sessions with anyone in the bunch, including a foster/adoptive child, their siblings, or parents.
- Contact us for advice or assistance if your family or someone you know is searching for a safe, stable home for a child living in crisis in Alabama.
Thank you for reading today’s blog, and until next time, have a Happy New Year!